30 December 2008

The Song of Hiawatha

I read Evangeline this month and fell immediately in love with Longfellow. He is dramatically overlooked. Frost gets too much credit as the premier American author. No one, no one I have ever read, conveys the spirit and sense of the American idyllic landscape like Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. I would not know or care about poetry if it were not for this man.

This is a spiritual blog right? So why am I talking about poetry? Christians need to reclaim good poetry and song-writing. We, of all people, should know and have the deepest and most dramatic feelings for the things God has made. We should love the creation and be fluent in praising God for it, because it was His idea. Good verse, for some reason I don't understand yet, communicates the beautiful and the terrible stronger even than does good prose.

This said, I just finished The Song of Hiawatha. It is a poem I heartily recommend. It is a beautiful and intricate introduction into the idolatrous workings of the American Indians and, in a way, communicates the tragedy of our having destroyed them. It is also a masterpiece of idyllic writing taking place next to Lake Superior (Gitche Gumee) and basically throughout America. Passages like this are what made me fall in love with poetry,
"By the shore of Gitche Gummee,
By the shining Big-Sea-Water,
At the doorway of his wigwam,
In the pleasant Summer morning,
Hiawatha stood and waited.
All the air was full of freshness,
All the earth was bright and joyous,
And before him, through the sunshine,
Westward toward the neighboring forest,
Passed in golden swarms the Ahmo,
Passed the bees, the honey-makers,
Burning, singing, in the sunshine.
Bright above him shone the heavens,
Level spread the lake before him;
From its bosom leaped the sturgeon,
Sparkling, flashing in the sunshine;
On its margin the great forest
Stood reflected in the water,
Every tree top had its shadow,
Motionless beneath the water."
Incredible. This reflects every sense and every emotion I have ever felt in the wilderness of the Great Lakes and pushes down into my deepest thoughts with its beautiful meter and rythmic explanations. I have seen the fish glisten in sunshine, the bees buzz through the forest, and felt the summer morning fresh in its new dawning. We ought to re-embrace poetry of this sort and claim it for the glory of God. We ought to write poetry that makes people say, "I've been there," and long to be there again.

Soli Deo Gloria,

R. D. Thompson

29 December 2008

One Reason School Can Be Bad

One reason school can be bad is because you cram loads of information into your head which you have no intention of ever remembering.

The greatest of all my triumphs in school has been passing the dreaded biology with an A. How I did it I will never know. The funny thing is...I remember nothing. I was just going through my old quizzes and found an answer I recorded on a quiz from memory. Just listen to this,
"The T&T complex serves to cover the actin filament inhibiting the myosin head from attaching and contracting. When a nerve impulse hits the synapse on a muscle, Acetycholine distributes over the plasma membrane which causes an action potential that spreads through the T-tubles. When the T-tbules depolarize Ca is released by the sarcoplasmic reticulum into the cytoplasm. Ca attaches to the troponin complex and displaces tropomyosin allowing the myosin head to attach to actin and contract."
Um...excuse me?

I pray to God I remember my theology better than that answer which I have utterly forgotten!

What is an actin filament?

Soli Deo Gloria,

R. D. Thompson